Hextall won’t talk about Bernier
Four years ago, Ron Hextall had swallowed hard and accepted a job to become Paul Holmgren’s assistant general manager in Philadelphia. Hextall saw fast growth potential in the new position, and he wasn’t wrong. That’s why he was leaving Los Angeles after seven years in the same management role there.
Hextall appeared on a national sports radio show that summer, explaining his reasons for returning to his Philly hockey roots, and talking with fondness about the people he would be leaving behind. One that he didn’t have to talk about: Jonathan Bernier.
That’s only because Bernier, a young goalie recognized around the league as a booming talent waiting to happen, had already been traded by the Kings to the Toronto Maple Leafs, where he was only expected to lead a hockey renaissance in the league’s most pressurized market.
Hextall, presumably a close advisor to Bernier during their
time together in L.A., talked about the goalie not hitting his potential with the Kings only because they had Jonathan Quick, the standout starter who had led the club to the 2012 Stanley Cup.
“Jon has never proved himself, necessarily, as a No. 1,” Hextall said about Bernier in that 2013 radio interview. “He’s a great kid; absolutely super kid. I think the world of the kid. He works his butt off, he’s one of the best conditioned athletes at training camp and he’s very serious about what he does.
“He’s a real talented kid. ... He’s got huge upside. Absolutely huge.”
Four years later, Bernier is still working to turn that potential Hextall saw into something meaningful on the ice. Things hadn’t turned out the way Bernier or the Leafs wanted. He flopped a one-season audition in Anaheim, and now he’s an available free agent with a discounted price tag. And on a July 1 free agency day in which Hextall was shopping for a goalie for the Flyers.
On Sunday, Hextall talked about his new free agent goalie ... Brian Elliott.
When asked if he had at least considered Bernier as that second Flyers goalie, Hextall said, “I’m not going to get into who we talked to and who we didn’t talk to. We looked at everybody out there and we felt, quite frankly, that Brian was the best fit.
“He’s a really good team guy,” Hextall added about Elliott. “His work ethic is at a high level, his compete is at a high level. His teammates want to play for him, there’s a lot of things when you look at goalies that you look for and Brian checked a lot of the boxes off.
“Again, the fact that he played in a tandem — Michal Neuvirth is a good goalie — and the fact that Brian played well in a tandem (in St. Louis) played into it. So there were a number of things we looked at and we thought Brian was the best fit.”
Elliott, 32, is a veteran of 372 NHL games (339 starts) and has been a pretty good goalie most places. He’s gone 191-117-39 with a .242 goals-against average and .913 save percentage during his career, numbers not far off the career marks of the goalie Hextall just parted ways with, Steve Mason.
Then there’s Bernier, who is 28 and has played less games (252), and whose statistical percentages aren’t all that far off Elliott’s numbers (109-95-27, 2.65 and .915).
But Bernier still is regarded as a goalie with potential never reached, which might have been the best reason old friend Ron Hextall could have brought him in, not so much as a backup or fair-share goaltending partner to frequently injured Neuvirth, but instead as a guy in need of a real chance to turn himself into a No. 1 goalie at a bargain price.
Perhaps it was the Toronto experience which has cut the legs out of Bernier’s reputation. He had immediatedly wrested the starting job away from James Riemer during the 2013-14 season, wound up playing 55 games, posting a 2.68 GAA and .923 SP. But injuries helped limit him to 38 games the next season with the Leafs, and with them continuing to miss the playoffs, Bernier was traded prior to last season to Anaheim.
That really didn’t work out, despite winning 21 of 32 games, he wasn’t to find his place with the Ducks, either. Now Bernier is off to Colorado, having signed a 1-year deal worth $2.75 million with the Avalanche.
The same average salary the Flyers will pay to Elliott this year and next.
Bernier will probably be a backup to Semyon Varlamov there while trying to make people remember the potential that was once there, the potential that could still be there, ready to pay off for the team that takes a real chance on him.
In that 2013 interview, Hextall had said about Bernier, “With us (the Kings), he didn’t have a chance to prove that he can be a No. 1 goalie; carry the load for 60 or 65 games, and be successful in the playoffs. There’s every reason in place to think that he’s going to do that.”
Yet it hasn’t happened and won’t happen for the Flyers.
“You want players to want to play with all your players,” Hextall said. “You want players to buy into a team system. You want them to be happy for their teammates, to play for the team first, not themselves.”
To that end, Mason, who perhaps hurt his status here by being honest in postgame interviews when he wasn’t very happy (ah, sins of the goaltender), knew essentially before the season ended that he wasn’t going to be asked back.
And Bernier ... well, maybe he can hit a career high in the Rocky Mountains.
Elliott, another guy who never quite caught on as a frequently working No. 1 goalie, is here to share and share alike in the Flyers’ crease. It’s simply how hockey business works sometimes.
“All goalies struggle and it’s exactly why we feel comfortable with a tandem of Brian and Michal,” Hextall said. “Demands on the players these days, it’s really hard to find a guy that can play 65 games. So we’re really comfortable with our tandem.”